Getting method names from ActionController extension

Question

I have an extension to ActiveRecord's class ActionController:

module MyExtension
  def my_method
    "default implementation"
  end
end
ActionController::Base.class_eval { include MyExtension }

All my controllers inherit from ApplicationController, which inherits from ActionController::Base. I want to add to and override the methods in MyExtension in the inherited class

class MyController < ApplicationController
   module MyExtension
     def my_method
       "overridden implementation"
     end
     def my_new_method
       "added method implementation"
     end
   end
 end

I then want to look up the methods defined in MyExtension for a specific Controller class dynamically

controller = Kernel.const_get("MyController")
methods_in_my_extension = Kernel.const_get("MyController::MyExtension").public_instance_methods

Obviously, this does not work, since there are no MyController::MyExtension constant defined.

In a more general sense, what I want to achieve is:

1. Group methods to implement default behavior for classes inheriting from ActionController::Base

2. Be able to override and add to those methods in the class definition

3. Dynamically get a list of the grouped methods for a specific class

Edit: In answer to Deefour about why I want to do this:

I am creating a CLI menu to wrap around the controllers. It takes input from the user to call controller methods. The menu collects the methods directly from the controllers and thereby defines valid commands/input.

What I want is to define a new level of encapsulation, a new access specifier, a subset of the public methods, which is accessible to the CLI menu.

I could achieve this by just creating a prefix for all menu-available methods, but I am also trying to get a grip on the inner workings on ruby.

Answer 1

I figured it out:

The ActionControllerExtension:

module MyExtension
  module MyDefaultImplementations
    def my_method
      "default implementation"
    end
  end
  def get_selected_methods
    default = MyDefaultImplementations.public_instance_methods
    added = Kernel.const_get(self.class.name).const_get("MyImplementation").public_instance_methods
    return (default + added).uniq
  end
end
ActionController::Base.class_eval { include MyExtension }

The Controller:

class MyController < ApplicationController
  module MyImplementation
    def my_method
      "overridden implementation"
    end
    def my_new_method
      "added method implementation"
    end
  end
  include MyImplementation
end

That seems to be working for now. If anyone has any alternate/better approaches I would love to see them. Also if there are any major caveats or conflicts with convention, let me know.